Practical Applications of "New Science" Research

The computer has as much to do with Information Age Warfare as the internal combustion engine has to do with Industrial Age Warfare or mere muscle has to do with Agricultural Age Warfare. Many in the defense establishment, however, equate Information Technology with Information Age Warfare at the same time they continue to hold mechanistic models of warfare in high esteem.

The last decade has seen an explosion of multi-disciplinary research at places like the Santa Fe Institute and the New England Complex Systems Institute. These groups are developing new mathematical techniques to evaluate information rich processes. They are also finding rich similarities between disciplines long thought irrelevant to each other. Taken in the whole, this “New Science” research is emerging its own field of activity and providing new tools for the Operations Research analyst. Alidade is pioneering the application of New Science tools to warfare problems.